So we have started playing SW RPG again, and we are picking up right where we left off. This is the gist of it:

I'm looking to move my campaign away from the rigid environment of the Star Wars setting, but want to retain the feel of the concept (ie Jedi, Bounty Hunters, the Hutts, the Empire/Republic/Senate, etc.),

Below is the full explanation for those who want to read it. The summation is that ordinary people under the leadership of an Emperor have come to the fanatical conclusion that the Jedi are to blame for every war the galaxy has ever become embroiled in, going back 10,000 years. And so, anyone who can use the Force is killed at birth (to reflect the perverse and completely twisted nature of the galaxy under the current leadership, the process is actually called "Sanctification," but it's basically murder). Inquistors more ruthless than the ones of the Dark Times era hunt the Jedi as well.

Let me know what you think, those who read all the way through this very long exposition. I'm certainly open to some revision of this concept, if someone has a good idea.

Thanks in advance.

Here is the full version of what I came up with:

It's circa 2,000 ABY.

After the fall of the Sith Order in the time of Cade Skywalker, the Empire rebuilt itself, enveloped what was left of the former Galactic Alliance, and has stood with an Emperor at its head ever since. Recognizing the importance of giving the many peoples of the various members worlds a voice, Emperor Cherelous Fel, who lived from 1553-1637 ABY recreated the Senate and gave them the authority to govern themselves in matters of state. Unlike the Senate of the Old Republic eras, this Senate is made of up of clusters of star systems. Instead of one representative from each planet, the Senate consists of 25 members from the most respected and most populated planets. Lesser planets and star systems must ally themselves with the Senator-led worlds if they want a say in the decision-making process.

All decisions still require the Emperor's final approval, and Cherelous Fel retained for himself the right to conduct business pertaining to the security and prosperity of the Empire without the Senate's approval. Other Emperors since his demise have cursed him in secret for The Restoration Act, as it has come to be known, and it is widely known that several of those emperors have had Senators assassinated when they threatened to take away the Emperor's power.

It has been a tenuous alliance at best between the two forms of government, but it is what it is. And at times, the Senate and the Emperor tend to agree about the correct course of action. Most of the time, in fact.

The greatest example of complete agreement between the two branches of government came in the year 1871 BBY, when a member of the Jedi Order turned to the Dark Side and began kidnapping Younglings from the temple to train them in the way of the Sith. The Jedi Order, lacking the resources to hunt the Sith, called for the Empire to help, and requested the Emperor commit Imperial Knights to the mission. Emperess Serenus Treylon, a descendant of the Fel line and an Imperial Knight herself, reluctantly agreed to the request, but only after years of contemplation and a full review of the situation by her Knights (it took her nearly seven years to commit to the fight). Only when it became clear that the Jedi-turned-Sith was targeting worlds within the Empire, did she agree to the alliance.

Her knights quickly found the location of the planet where the Sith was hiding the Younglings (the Jedi Council believed the discovery came almost too quickly), and a coordinated strike plan was formed. Led by Jedi, the Imperial Navy and its battle-hardened Stormtrooper units headed into battle. It was expected to be a relatively easy task with the goal of rescuing as many children as possible (those who had not completely fallen to the dark side), and to kill the Sith's rogue leader. However, things did not go according to plan.

As the 30-some Imperial ships came out of hyperspace, 12 of them immediately opened fire on their allies. On the ships that defended themselves, Imperial Knights slaughtered the bridge officers and took control of the ships. Any who refused to serve the Sith or Darth Gorund were jettisoned into space.

The Empress had clearly lost control of her knights, and without the ability to determine which were loyal, she had all of them executed, even those who had served as her bodyguards, starting with the ones still on the Imperial homeworld of Veraka (the Empress' childhood home. In a bold move, she then organized the rest of her military fleet and took command of the flagship on a second mission back to the Sith stronghold. By then, however, Gorund had amassed a fleet of nearly 500 ships, ranging in size and strength from the smallest cruisers to medium sized warships to the Imperial behemoths he had captured during the coup. His plan had been surprisingly simple: approach star systems with high levels of influence who had been spurned by the Senate and denied a membership seat. With such systems on his side, he quickly amassed the resources necessary to assemble a fleet that not only defeated the Imperial Navy but also allowed Gorund to capture the Empress. He held her hostage for more than a year, and multiple efforts to reach the planet to rescue her were unsuccessful (to put it mildly). The Empire nearly destroyed itself trying to save its leader, one of the most beloved emperors ever to sit upon the throne.

18 months to the day of her capture, Gorund arranged for a public broadcast on the HoloNet. He announced that the Empress had borne him an heir to the throne and was of no further use. He then had her brought into the room where he stood with the baby, set the child down, and stabbed her through the heart with his lightsaber as she remained bound and gagged. He announced his intent to take the throne as ward to his daughter - Lyrana - until she came of age, and that he would be returning to Veraka with his fleet in six months. By then, there was little doubt that anyone could overpower the Sith. The Jedi were eliminated in the initial attack. The Imperial Knights had all been executed or converted. Gorund never stopped kidnapping children, and there were no reliable reports on how many Sith there were at this point.

Outraged and horrified at Gorund's actions and his subsequent annoucement, the Senate met in secret, and agreed to take action immediately. They assigned four people to oversee the task, people who would not have contact with the Senators so as to prevent any of them from unwittingly giving up the intended treachery. Only two of the senators even knew the names of the people who would be plotting this conspiracy. The plan was to gather as much Ysalimiri as they could and have it smuggled to the planet.

They covered the throne room with it, and waited.

When Gorund arrived, there was no opposition. He was led straight to the throne room, his guards in tow, and seated. He immediately realized something was wrong, but it was too late. Planet security troops rushed in and killed the entire delegation of Sith.

Before the ships in orbit could react, the lead Senator - a Wookiee named Ferrolook - took the child to his private starship and left the planet. Within minutes, the surface of the planet was bombarded and scorched. No one survived the attack, nor did anyone expect to.

The Senate relocated to Shalorna, a planet close to Coruscant, and immediately convened. The position of Emperor was suspended, and Ferrolook was named as Chancellor of the Senate, with all the power and authority the emperor had once had - except for the right to overrule them, or to conduct business without their knowledge.

That lasted about a month, as the Empress' sister, Chanda, claimed the new title of Emperor and demanded the Senate approve her appointment as the rightful heir. The Senate refused, under Ferrolook's leadership. Under normal circumstances, Chanda would have gone to the Jedi Order for mediation, but without any of them around, she was forced to take matters into her own hands. Chanda was not Force-sensitive nor did she have any Jedi training with a lightsaber. What she did have was a skill at negotiation and a charismatic guile. Once it became clear the Senate would not back down, she took her case to the people. In her greatest speech to the citizens of the Empire, Chanda blamed the Jedi and the Sith for everything that had happened throughout the history of the galaxy. Everytime war broke out, a Jedi could be found at the head of it. She even adopted a revisionist view of the Vong war, in which it had been asserted by some historians that the Vong were once Sith and only found our galaxy because the Jedi invaded theirs. She laid the fault for everything at the Jedi's feet, and called on the people to trust her as the rightful heir to the throne.

"Don't let the Jedi splinter us yet again," she is remembered as saying in her speech.

It worked. The Senate was compelled by its member worlds to approve her appointment. As her first act, she created the title of Commandant, someone who served as both advisor to the Emperor and head of the Senate. She even gave the Commandant shared authority in times of war so that no one person is making strategic decisions. Both must agree. The position remains to this day.

In the months that followed, Chanda took her message of fear about the manipulation powers of the Jedi and the Sith and twisted it into her means to win the war. Those serving Gorund's forces, which quickly fell into disarray after his death, turned on their Force-using leaders and killed them. Within a year, the Imperial Navy was once again under control of the Empire, and Chanda pardoned every non Force user for their role in the war. They were allowed to return home to their families.

Within two weeks, a bill appeared before the Senate, labeled the Jedi Protection Act. But actually what it was was a bill to exterminate the Jedi, to kill anyone with a certain midichlorian level, and to barr Force-users (if there were any) from gathering in groups of more than two. That last part was added after it became clear that not everyone supported the JPA.

Chanda was determined to put an end to the Jedi way of leading people into war on one side or the other. "Enough is enough" became a common slogan.By the time the bill was fully debated, most of those who could use the Force had left the Empire. Some star systems united under a banner as a safe haven for Force-users. The dissent served to cause as much havoc on the galaxy as the Youngling War had caused just two years earlier.

The day of the vote, Senate members approved the bill 18-7, and Chanda signed it almost immediately. She had been encouraged to adopt it as an Emperor's Act, but she declined. She wanted this to be "the will of the people," so that the member worlds would respect it. The seven star systems that rejected it - including the Mon Calamari - immediately resigned as members of the Empire and created the Coalition.

In a war that lasted more than 17 years and ultimately earned the blame of the Jedi because they fought for the Coalition, Imperial forces eventually conquered those systems one by one and reincorporated them into the Empire. The war left those systems so devastated that they didn't even have enough power or resources to reclaim Senate-seat status.

Consequently, the first Force-user killed under the JPA act was Gorund's daughter. She was four years old.

120 years later, Force-users are rare. Inquistors (named for the Jedi Hunters of Palaptine's day) hunt them and their families. Under the leadership of Chanda's great-grandson Nurak, newborn babies are required to undergo a midichlorian count check before doctors can even cut the umbilical cord. Those who are believed to be Force-users are "sanctified," meaning killed.

It is a time of fanaticism and mistrust, but also a time of relative peace.

Jedi do still exist in this universe, but they move about in secret. Their counsel, their wisdom, is unwanted. They fear themselves as much as they fear the non-Force wielders. The Inquisitors are even more feared in this era than they were in the days of Darth Vader.

One heck of a read, Boris. I'm sorry I'm not gonna be able to play. Funnily enough, i'm using a very similar idea for the bad guys in a star wars fanfic i'm writing, except i'm focusing on the Force users who have been fighting against the extermination campaign.

Yeah, we've come a long way since then. They've learned that several "alien" races (ie Mon Cal, Gran, Aqualish, etc.) are all extinct now because they sided with the Force users. The modern Empire is very much modeled after WWII Germany era, a very fanatical group of people. But the PC's have learned that not all Force users are being exterminated at birth. Some of them believed to have a predisposition to the dark side with the proper encouragement are being carted away in secret to learn how to channel that power. And then they are used as the Jedi hunters of the era. If an Inquisitor ship shows up in your sector, leave immediately. They have been known to destroy whole planets more than once if they detect even the slightest disturbance in the Force. Already, 2 of the 3 people playing Jedi in the campaign - the group actually started in RotS era and got caught in a time distortion field that threw them forward to the current time period via a stasis chamber - have already been killed, and the remaining Jedi rolled his character up as someone who grew up in the current era with specific talents that are less Force oriented and harder to detect when used.

More recently, these darksiders have begun experimenting with the Rakghoul disease and now plan to use it to destroy resistance bases and remote outposts where traditional Jedi are known to gather.

One heck of a read, Boris. I'm sorry I'm not gonna be able to play. Funnily enough, i'm using a very similar idea for the bad guys in a star wars fanfic i'm writing, except i'm focusing on the Force users who have been fighting against the extermination campaign.

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